Fidelity: Ordinals and Runes Offered No Profit Boost for Miners

Fidelity Digital Assets released an in-depth study on two Bitcoin protocols — Ordinals and Runes. Covering Q3 and Q4 of 2024, the analysts concluded that their impact on miners’ earnings was minimal: blockchain activity increased by just 3.4%, while average transaction fees stayed at roughly 0.00024 BTC.

Ordinals aims to let users “mint” unique objects within Bitcoin transactions. However, Fidelity found that only 2.1% of miners gained extra revenue by adopting this feature. Runes, designed for special-purpose token creation, also fell short of becoming a major growth catalyst, appearing in only 1.7% of all blocks.

Overall, the report indicates that most miners continue to focus on standard BTC production and sales. In fact, 55% of surveyed industry participants have no plans to integrate Ordinals or Runes over the next six months. Fidelity’s experts stress that without widespread adoption by major platforms, the effect of new solutions on profitability remains negligible.